Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

A Quantitative Analysis Of The Effects Of Urbanization, Mesophication And Prescribed Burns On Oak Woodlands In The Chicago Metropolitan Area, Chad Populorum

Celebration of Learning

Urban expansion has had devastating impacts on forest ecosystems, especially within the past century. Human attempts to dominate nature have diminished natural disturbance regimes, which have maintained the biodiversity and historic composition of these ecosystems. Fires have been a prominent force in maintaining the structure of oak, hickory and other heliophytic (sun loving and fire-adapted) forest systems. Human induced fire suppression has led to mesophication across North America. Mesophication is the transition from drier conditions with open canopies to wetter conditions with closed canopies. These new conditions decrease the survival rates of these important species and begin to favor mesophytic ...

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

As climate change becomes a reality for the management of Puget Sound, water resource and fisheries managers should consider incorporating predictions and outcomes of future climate drivers into their long-range plans and daily operations. Modeling tools that focus on climate impacts and predictions show that extreme events are more often responsible for large impacts than the long-term press of climate change. Working with water resource and fisheries managers in the Dungeness and Skagit watersheds, this project uses outputs of existing climate and estuarine models to define thresholds and metrics associated with extreme climate-driven events that are of importance to the ...

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

Understanding impacts of climate change on Salish Sea water quality is critical yet challenging due to the complexity, strength and diversity of influences on circulation and mixing. Different extreme climate conditions in recent years (2014-2017) include record warm temperatures with reduced snow pack in 2014-2015 followed by a few years of alternating summer droughts with record rainy seasons. These conditions influenced marine water temperature, salinity and dissolved oxygen (DO) throughout the Salish Sea. Analyses reveal distinct differences in these key physical and chemical characteristics between Strait of Juan de Fuca sites and sites within Puget Sound basins. Extremely low DO ...

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

River temperatures are increasing as a results of climate change, and combined with decreased summertime flows, coldwater species are becoming increasingly stressed. In order to conserve sensitive species, managers need an estimate of how the availability of summertime thermal refuges in rivers will change in the future. Here, we applied the DHSVM-RBM, an existing process-based water temperature model that has been shown to accurately represent temporal variance in water temperature over hours to years. We calibrated this model to empirical data for two case study watersheds (Siletz River, Oregon and Snoqualmie River, Washington) to also ensure representation of observed spatial ...

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

Zooplankton are critical components of the pelagic food web. This presentation will discuss zooplankton ecology in the Fraser River Estuary, drawing on the preliminary results of a monitoring study, which ran from August 2013 to May 2016, as well as specific investigations into the life history and behaviour of one of the dominant species, the copepod Eurytemora affinis. Data analysis is ongoing, but, for most of the year, estuarine zooplankton appear limited by the estuary’s short residence time. Due to the advective nature of their environment, estuarine zooplankton have evolved mechanisms to retain populations within the estuary. Our results ...

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

As Seattle’s economy continues to evolve, its significance as a port city is undiminished. The container ports of Seattle and Tacoma recently entered into a joint management agreement and, together, they are the fourth largest container gateway in North America. At the same time, competition is fierce between the remaining rival ports and capital spending on the land-side cargo terminals is a key variable in this competition. This makes it critical that the Port understands what role climate change adaptation will play in the broader challenge of setting the level of public fund expenditures on terminal upgrade projects. The ...

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

In the Stillaguamish estuary, tidal wetlands have been receding for decades as a result of both natural and anthropogenic changes. Despite current restoration efforts, monitoring suggests that rising stress from climate change impacts on summer flows, legacy stresses from the levee system, and increased plant mortality from avian and insect herbivores may interact to accelerate the rate of marsh loss. Lessons learned from a 2012 restoration project should inform adaptive management and future restoration projects. Post-restoration monitoring has revealed a pattern of interacting stresses at both the site and system scales that affects marsh productivity and resilience to climate change ...

Salish Sea Ecosystem Conference

Changing climate conditions, along with land-use and other ecological changes, are affecting the health, vitality, and resilience of Chinook salmon populations in watersheds throughout Puget Sound. Restoration and protection projects are designed to address the most critical factors affecting salmon populations. However, with climate change, these factors may change: the medium- and long-term success of the projects and expected benefits to salmon may be compromised and/or current investments may not achieve expected results. The Puget Sound Partnership recently released guidance to help project sponsors and local salmon recovery lead entities identify key climate-related risks for Chinook salmon, guide project ...

Calculating The Predictability Of Climate Change: The Effect Of Climate Change On Moth Species In The Pacific Northwest Varies Among Functional Groups., Julie Maurer

Scholars Week

Climate change has driven shifts in phenology and distribution for many species. These effects are often idiosyncratic and it remains unclear whether they vary consistently among functional groups, limiting our ability to draw broad conclusions about how climate change affects species. Previous studies have indicated that Lepidoptera (butterflies and moths) are sensitive to climate change. We analyzed a large database of moth specimen records from the Pacific Northwest (PNW) to examine climate change responses over more than 100 years for a suite of 241 functionally diverse species, including spring and fall active species as well as dietary generalists and specialists ...

Conference on Applied Statistics in Agriculture

Land Use and Land Cover Change (LULCC) influence the climate at a global and local scale. Using long term microclimate data (2002-2009, 2011-2012) from the Carbon Sequestration Project (CSP), Mead, NE, this study examines how crop selection and water management can mitigate heat in the atmosphere. Mitigation of global warming is dependent on the management of crop lands, and the amount and timing of rainfall during the growing season. Rainfed crops were found to heat the passing air. The irrigated maize crop was able to mitigate 20 to 62% of the sensible heat (H) compared to the rainfed maize counterpart ...

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The family Pomacentridae is among the most diverse of the perciformes, boasting 400 different species of damselfish. These fish are found in coral reefs of varying depths around the world, most of which risk great damage due to climate change. In addition, many species are key components of the ornamental aquarium trade. Considering these threats, the importance of examining the state of Pomacentridae is paramount in examining the health of our oceans. Using IUCN Red List methods, preliminary data suggests some species of damselfish are at elevated risk of extinction.

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Climate change and increases in nitrogen deposition impact ecosystems globally. Projected atmospheric warming allows rain to fall in larger events with longer dry periods in between, increasing rainfall variability in many regions. Concurrently, the combustion of fossil fuels and the heavy use of nitrogen fertilizers continue to increase the availability of nitrogen globally. However, not much is known about how these global change factors, increased rainfall variability and nitrogen deposition, interact with each other to affect ecosystem functions, particularly belowground where root production contributes to soil carbon pools- an important component in regulating climate. In order to study these factors ...

Graduate Research Symposium (GCUA) (2010 - 2017)

There is a great deal of uncertainty as to how biological communities respond to changes in land use and climate change, a situation particularly relevant in protected areas such as national parks that were designated to conserve specific biological features. Utilizing extant vegetation data sets with repeatable methodology can provide opportunities for insight into previous vegetation change and provide base line data for long-term monitoring projects useful for modeling vegetation community trajectories. We have relocated and resurveyed 106 sites from a vegetation community study initiated in 1979 in the Newberry Mountains, southern Nevada, within Lake Mead National Recreation Area managed ...

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

The first manifestations of global change will most likelv be observed in the Earth's atmosphere. Changing wind patterns, for example, may effect the long distance dispersal of microor-g anisms. The overall objective of this research is to correlate molecular assessments of microbial community structure from cloud water and snow samples, obtained from DRI's Storm Peak Laboratory atop Mt. Werner in Colorado, with atmospheric data and calculated air mass back trajectories. Our activities for summer of 2009 will be a focused proof-of-concept exercise to determine if intact microbial DNA and viable cells can be recovered from cloud water and ...

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP)

Climate change is fundamentally connected to animal development and survival, and the life history of an organism must be coordinated with predictable seasonal changes of the environment. Climate change affects the life cycle of plants, a major food source for insects. If photoperiod, the primary environmental queue that insects utilize to determine the proper emergence time, and food availability becomes out of sync, many populations of insects and other animals could be threatened. Understanding animal development can provide insight into this issue and could provide clues that may help the scientific community predict how insect populations may respond to climate ...